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Focus on fleets

How FEV Consulting supports automotive manufacturers and suppliers with strategies to reduce emissions through powertrain and vehicle technologies.

5. July 2016 | Consulting

Automotive manufacturers are faced with increasingly strict CO2 emission goals, which will challenge them until 2025 and beyond. The manufacturers must manage to implement client expectations simultaneously taking into account cost effectiveness and low emissions. In this context, a solution can be provided by concepts that not only fit the company, but also enable it to flexibly react to new framework conditions. Typically, there is more than one ideal solution. FEV Consulting supports manufacturers and suppliers with a structured and comprehensive approach, enabling them to select the ideal technology for them out of many technology options.

In Technology Roadmapping, FEV Consulting identifies new technologies and assesses their impact on important characteristics. Following that, strategies for powertrain and vehicle technologies are examined, thus supporting product planning. The target values respectively the consequences of individual configurations are determined by taking the vehicle fleet into consideration. This ensures that the result can be assessed in the context of the CO2 emission goals of the vehicle manufacturer.

Analysis of Drive Technology Strategies

Next to driver behavior and vehicle characteristics, the powertrain is the main factor influencing the CO2 emission of a vehicle. Said powertrain is becoming increasingly complex: traditional combustion engines and transmissions receive additional electric components, multiplying the potential drive topologies. With so many factors, it is obvious that there must be several ways of efficiently reducing emissions: „Identifying the most advantageous path highly depends on the automotive manufacturer‘s specific technology portfolio and existing competencies,“ explains Dr. Michael Wittler, Manager at FEV Consulting. Using a comprehensive approach, the experts at FEV therefore assess technology on the combustion engine, the transmission, and the entire vehicle. The database for this is constantly being expanded. Based on the results, the consultants determine the technology configuration that they deem to be the most advantageous for the respective automotive manufacturer. The FEV approach also enables us to analyze and compare technology trends. It also answers questions that arise from changing framework conditions, such as will downsizing be the right approach if the EU implements the WLTP as the standard drive cycle, replacing the NEDC?

Fleet Strategy

In order to achieve the CO2 target values for the entire fleet of the respective automotive manufacturer, FEV Consulting takes into account both the portfolio of each vehicle segment and the most important powertrain types: What fuel is being used? Is it a hybrid vehicle? If so, how much electrification is used? How many electric vehicles does the manufacturer offer? How well are certain vehicle technology concepts accepted by the client? All this data is incorporated in the prognosis of the FEV consultant regarding how the future vehicle segment portfolio should look and how the powertrain types should be distributed in order to emit less CO2 from the point of view of the entire fleet. Vehicle measures are also taken into account, since lighter vehicles with less driving resistance also help reduce emissions. Last but not least, experts at FEV take regional legal regulations into account. „Finally, scenarios can be modeled so that different strategies can be assessed against one another. The sensitivity analysis identifies how efficiency measures can best be leveraged with regard to the whole vehicle fleet,“ concludes Dr. Wittler.

Through the connection of the elements Technology Roadmapping, powertrain technology strategy analysis and vehicle fleet compliance analysis, FEV Consulting is able to develop consistent strategies. In doing so, questions from the both suppliers and the automotive manufacturers are addressed.